Personal Projects
Here are some of the personal projects I have or are working on over time. Some trivial, some super cool; all fun to talk about.
I am a Software Developer and Electrical/Computer Engineer with a huge passion for technology and coding. I am very energetic about learning new skills as well as putting skills to use on fun projects. In my free time I am also an avid PC and Table-Top gamer.
I am a professional software developer with 5 years of experience and currently working at IBM on the Linux on Z project as a Solution Tester.
I am by education an Electrical Engineer with a Computer engineering concentration, I got my degree at Western New England University in 2015.
I have been working in GNU/Linux and other UNIX like environments both professionally and personally for over 6 years. I have used Z/OS, RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and more.
Whether its playing a rich story game on a computer, or sitting at a table with friends to play some D&D, I am a very avid gamer who enjoys spending many hours enjoying a great game.
Though my years as a Developer and Electrical/Computer Engineer might be few in number, That has not stopped me from trying to learn as much as I can. I love technology and love learning about it; whether thats learning how to build a custom LED controlled box to go into my computer or learning about Machine Learning and AI. I want to learn about it all and then use those skills for fun and exciting projects.
Here are some of the personal projects I have or are working on over time. Some trivial, some super cool; all fun to talk about.
If you have wish to contact me, feel free to send me an email and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Website (at) [domain name]
If you wish to see my resume, Below is a link to download a pdf of my resume.
My Resume
My first NAS (Network Attached Storage) Box was a custom built box using spare parts I had. I used Debian as the base OS and used btrfs as a software pool to create a large volume over many drives. Using NFS, SMB, and FTP server services I made the box accessible over the network so all my devices could access the data stored on it.
Though after a few years and my storage requirements started to grow, I needed a better server both hardware and storage wise. I decided to go with something that was more an off the shelf solution for my main storage.
I had a spare IBM Model M laying around as well an a Teensy 3.1 micro controller. So because I like the QMK firmware for its customization, I figured it would be a fun project to convert one of the Model Ms to a QMK keyboard.
I started out by removing the connectors on the old PCB that connected the ribbon cables to the matrix. I then soldered together a new board that had the Teensy as well as those ribbon cable connectors so that way the keyboard could easily be put back together. Then I wired a USB connector where the old PS/2 connector was as well as the speaker and added in a reset button to make flashing the Teensy easier
Now that the hardware seemed to be in a good place, I started to build a keyboard layout and key mapping for the model M. Once I got QMK to build successfully I deployed it to the Teensy.... to be disappointed... I tried several different modifications to my code but nothing seems to have worked. even having qmk send out keystrokes on boot I got nothing.
Which at the moment leaves me thinking I made a mistake somewhere hardware wise. I need to spend some time doing some debugging of the hardware to make sure everything is as I think it should be.
Top: Keyboard I put together for my fiance, she is a big fan of the Nightmare for Christmas. So for Christmas I bought her a nice Aluminum keyboard, painted the back with a white Jack Skellington and Zero. I also got some custom orange keycaps to go with the Halloween and Nightmare before Christmas theme.
Bottom: A KBD75 custom keyboard that I put together for my desktop. I got a nice orange aluminum chassis and Cherry MX green switches. Then using my favorite open-source firmware QMK, I put together an awesome custom keymap that puts all the keys and macros right where I want it.
Just the other day I had the idea of taking a Raspberry Pi Zero W, connecting some LED strips and a LCD Character Display and make a info display and led controller for my computer. Since my desktop has a Glass side panel, I can take an LCD display, attach it to the side and have a display I can use for many things. Also using Adafruit's piuart module, I can directly attach the pi and my computer via a USB port and have a direct communication line without relying on a network. This will allow me to send data from my PC to the pi and have the pi display the information.
Because one of my passions revolves around software development CAD and computer games. I have a great computer to compliment those passions.
Specs:
i5-7600k
Evga z170 Classified K
32GB DDR4 RAM
EVGA GTX 980 Ti FTW
500GB Samsung 960 EVO nVME SSD
Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler
I have plenty of custom and fancy upgrades that I have planned for my computer and will update this post when I finish those.
Some of the upgrades include etching on the tempered glass side panel, Raspberry pi based LED controller, and more.
place holder